


On Call

by mrs_d



Category: due South
Genre: Discussion of alcoholism and its effects on families, Fraser is a great Mountie and a really good dad, Happy Ending, Holly's story, Kid Fic, M/M, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Series, Sappy, Sequel, Vague description of finding a dead body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-23 22:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4894870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_d/pseuds/mrs_d
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holly seemed to steel herself. “Did you— Ben, have you ever found anybody like my mom?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Call

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [With Six You Get Eggroll](https://archiveofourown.org/works/442926) by [Speranza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Speranza/pseuds/Speranza). 



> Inspired by the excellent dialogue between Fraser and Stella (reproduced below), this story is set six years after Speranza's.
> 
> “I was afraid I would drown, be absorbed, lose myself completely— no more _Stella_. It must be easier for men— because here you both are, with _six children_ , and you're both still yourselves, you still get to be yourselves, you're still exactly the _same_ —”
> 
> “That isn't true,” Fraser said, and his vehemence surprised her. “That's not true at all. You _do_ lose yourself, you _do_ drown, can't you see what's—” Fraser stopped, tried to gather himself, but he was upset, and the ice had cracked into huge, jagged pieces. “I'm not who I was,” Fraser told her. “I can't imagine Ray is either. You become a split self, you live as both yourself and them, however much you try not to.”

With Sarah out — Ben didn’t even want to think about what she and Charlie might be doing — and Ray at Andrew’s lacrosse game with the rest of the boys, the house was quiet, which was nice if only for its novelty. Ben was on call (he hardly ever wasn’t), so he was wearing his blue everyday uniform under Ray’s old Blackhawks hoodie, now stretched and faded with a broken zipper. Ben sank into one corner of the chesterfield, set his feet on the coffee table, and opened the novel he’d laid aside the previous evening.

Three sentences later, Holly emerged from the girls’ room with a notebook and a pen. They smiled at each other, and she curled up in the opposite corner of the couch, tucking her knees under her and using them as a flat surface for writing.

Ben returned to his book, but he wasn’t reading now so much as soaking in the comforts of a Friday evening at home. The slight sound of Holly’s hand moving across the page and the tick of the kitchen clock were wonderfully soothing. He cast a warm eye on his daughter as she scrawled blue lines in the notebook she’d purchased at Harmon’s last week. She was already halfway through it.

Of his and Ray’s children, Holly hadn’t struck him as the writer, given her athleticism and cheery demeanour. She still played hockey and goaded Ray with her quick sense of humour, but starting with that microscope Ray and Stella had gotten her, she’d taken more of an interest in scholarly pursuits as well; Ben thought he could see more of himself in her every day.

She looked up, met his eyes. There was a question in her face, but then she looked away. Ben waited, slowly replacing his bookmark and setting the novel aside, giving her the time and space she needed to ask.

After a moment, she closed the notebook and put it down on the floor beside the couch.

“Dad?” she began, and he knew it was serious.

“Yes, Holly?”

She drew in a deep breath, eyes looking over Ben’s shoulder. Then, in a rush, she asked, “What’s it like, being a cop?”

Ben raised his eyebrows; this wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Over the course of a few seconds, his options flashed before him: he could echo Ray’s levity, earning a laugh but ignoring the topic; he could play innocent, but it might anger her, since Holly, uncannily like Ray, seemed able to see through the facade right away; or he could be honest, but certain aspects of his work would no doubt upset a fifteen-year-old girl. He tugged on his ear thoughtfully, then decided to be as honest as he could, since she seemed to be interested in having a mature conversation.

“It depends on the day, Holly. And the place. It’s very different being a peace officer here than it was when I was in the States.”

She nodded but seemed to be waiting for more, so he stumbled on. “It can be draining,” he admitted at last. “It’s hard work.”

“But rewarding?”

“Yes,” he smiled.

“Scary?”

He hesitated. “Sometimes. Very.”

She seemed to steel herself. “Did you— Ben, have you ever found anybody like my mom?”

Without consciously deciding to, Ben slid across the couch and took her hand. It was trembling slightly. He kept his eyes on that hand, so small in his. It made being honest a little easier.

“Many times,” he said softly.

“How do you—” her voice wavered slightly. “What do you do? As a cop, I mean. How does that— how does it work?”

Ben sighed. “There are... procedures.” He winced as the word came out more Mountie than Dad. He tried again. “When I get a call that there’s been... an accident—”

“A death?”

He looked over sharply. “Sometimes. I don’t always know when I get the call.”

Holly nodded. “So you go there, and...?”

“Yes. I’ll go to the scene and start my investigation. I’m the ranking officer, which means—”

“Do you call the ambulance?”

He turned away again. “Uh, yes. Sometimes. Unless someone already has, in which case, I’ll direct the paramedics—”

“The coroner?”

Ben recoiled at hearing such a grown-up word in her voice. “If I have to,” he said, carefully watching her from the corner of his left eye.

She was blinking and nodding very fast. “And then you... you figure out what happened.”

“Yes. I gather evidence, draw conclusions, interview—”

“And you catch the bad guys?”

He smiled a little. Ray’s daughter too, no doubt about that. “Yes.”

She pulled her hand away, turned completely. Ben did the same, so they were facing each other across the couch, but her eyes avoided his face. They settled near his shoulder, where the RCMP emblem was just visible under the edge of Ray’s sweater.

“What if... what if there aren’t any bad guys?”

Before he could reply, Holly leaned into him, clutching him tightly. He awkwardly put his arms around her, stroking her hair a little as he tried to figure out what to say.

“I miss her,” she murmured into his chest after a moment. Ben didn’t need to ask who she was talking about. “I miss her, and I hate her, and I wish that she hadn’t— that I—”

“Holly, there’s nothing you could have done differently.”

She pulled away. For the first time, she looked angry. “How do you know? Maybe if I hadn’t—”

“No. Holly,” he said firmly, brushing a lock of hair away from her damp cheek. “You did everything you could at the moment you found her— you called an ambulance, you gave them your address, you—”

“Not right away,” she whispered, as if the words were being ripped out of her. She seemed desperate to look at anything other than him, and Ben was reminded of a cornered bear cub, hesitant but unpredictable.

“What do you mean?” he asked slowly.

“I didn’t— I saw her car, I knew what had happened because she’d done it before, but I didn’t even _look_ until—”

Ben pulled her back to him, his heart breaking. “Shh, it’s okay,” he said. The words sounded woefully inadequate, but he didn’t know what else to say, and Ray wasn’t around to advise him.

She pushed him away with surprising force. “Quit saying that!”

“Holly—?”

“It’s not okay, all right! And you—” she spun, almost spitting with anger, “—you, acting all... it doesn’t help!”

She turned her back to him like she was pouting, and maybe she was. If she were Sarah, Ben thought, she’d have run outside or into her room by now, but Holly wasn’t leaving. He felt completely at sea, wondering what he could possibly do or say to—

Then suddenly he understood. What Holly needed, why she’d started the conversation the way she had. He sighed and took a moment to rearrange his face. Then he stood, taking off Ray’s sweater and draping it across the back of the couch. Holly’s puffy eyes followed him as he crossed to the desk and retrieved a notepad and pen from beside the phone. He came back and sat on the coffee table directly across from her.

“Tell me what happened.”

Her face changed. He was sure that she’d never heard his Sergeant Benton Fraser, RCMP voice before, not even when he and Dief had caught Sarah out back with a joint in her hand. Even then he’d been Dad. Angry, disappointed Dad, but Dad nonetheless.

Holly wiped at her eyes, but her voice was steadier when she spoke. “Well, my mom went out that night—”

“What time?” Fraser interrupted.

Holly actually jumped in surprise. Ben had always taught them that it was rude to interrupt. “Uh, around 8? I think.”

Fraser wrote _Mom out: 8pm_ on the notepad, then looked up, tapping the pen. He realized he was channeling Ray’s techniques a little more than performing his own. The thought gave him courage.

“Uh...” He could tell Holly was straining to think back to when she was — good Lord — only seven years old. “I— uh, there was a babysitter with me,” she said at last.

“Who?”

“Marge. She was the next door neighbour, five minutes down the road. She’d come and look after me when...”

Fraser wrote, _Marge, sitter, neighbour_ , and asked without looking up, “When your mother couldn’t?”

“Yeah.” Holly’s voice was tiny again, and Ben nearly lost it, but this was what he had to do to get statements: ask, watch, wait. This was what it was like, being a cop.

“Was Marge with you all night?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you remember her leaving?”

“No.”

“Was she there when you woke up?”

“No.”

Rapid-fire was easier, Fraser realized, and he found himself writing _Talk to Marge_ on the page before he remembered he wasn’t actually working the case.

“What time did you go to bed?”

Holly smiled faintly. “Marge always let me stay up late. Like nine-thirty.”

Fraser quickly scrawled _Bed: 9:30pm_. “What did you guys do?”

“Homework,” Holly answered promptly. “Then some TV.”

Fraser nodded. “Anything else you remember?”

Holly closed her eyes, clearly trying to be a good witness. She scrunched up her face in concentration, then finally shook her head. “No. Sorry, Da—”

“Sergeant Fraser,” he corrected her, though his lips were twitching.

She nodded vigorously, also trying not to smile.

Fraser took a breath and went serious again. “So, the next morning...”

The words were like a drumbeat in the quiet room, reverberating through him.

“The next morning...” Holly repeated slowly, and Ben was proud of her for keeping it together like this, for trying to sort clearly through the hurt, to get the memory right. “The next morning, Marge was gone, and I figured my mom was in bed, sleeping it off.”

“Why did you think that?”

Holly shrugged. “It’s where she usually was.” There was only a little bitterness in her tone.

Fraser nodded to encourage her to go on.

“I looked out the window—”

“What time did you get up?” Fraser interrupted again.

“Uh, I don’t know. Seven?”

Fraser wrote that down.

“And I looked out the window. And I saw her...”

“Her car?”

“No.” Holly looked away, her bottom lip quivering a little.

“No?”

“No. I saw _her_. In the car. From the window.”

Fraser nodded, keeping his face blank. “Okay. Was this at seven, when you first got up?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you do then?”

“I saw her. I figured she was asleep out there, and I—” Holly drew a deep, hitching breath. “I got mad,” she said with obvious effort.

“Understandable.”

“Yeah.” A tear slid down her face, but she wiped at it impatiently. “So. I got mad. And I, I thought— I wonder if she’s okay.”

Fraser knew a lie when he heard one. He raised his eyebrows and gave her a look that was just a little bit Dad.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Okay, so I didn’t quite think that,” she admitted.

Fraser waited.

“I thought, Maybe this time I won’t go get her.”

Fraser waited.

“I thought, Maybe it’ll serve her right to wake up covered in puke and I’m not there to clean her up and put her to bed.”

Fraser waited.

“I thought, Maybe it’ll make her see that she’s— that she’s supposed to mother me, not the other way around.”

“All right,” Ben said quietly. He wrote _ambiv. re: alc. parent_.

Holly stared down at the floor between her feet. “Am I a bad person?” she mumbled.

Ben set down the notepad and ducked his head to find Holly’s eyes. “Not at all,” he said simply.

“Then why did I—?”

“You thought what any child would think in those circumstances.”

“...I did?”

“You did.” He leaned back. “Do you want to keep going?”

Holly nodded, so Ben picked up his notepad and scribbled, _tell H. re: my dad (guilt)_ and _Al-Anon Teen? ask Ray_.

Then Fraser looked up. “So you didn’t go out to the car right away?”

Holly shook her head. She was staring at his epaulette again. “I got ready for school like always, and when I went out to wait for the bus, I...”

“What time did the bus normally come?”

“Eight-fifteen, so I went by the car... probably a little after eight? And I looked in, and I saw her for real this time.”

Sergeant Benton Fraser braced himself, and then he asked his daughter to describe the corpse in as much detail as possible.

“She wasn’t wearing all of her clothes, that was the first thing I noticed. I was _so_ embarrassed. I was going to go inside, get a blanket to cover her up in case somebody saw.”

Ben wrote _shame, family secret, hero & enabler_. It kept him from clenching his hands into fists.

“Did you?” Fraser asked through tight teeth. “Get a blanket?”

“What?” Holly looked up. “Oh. No, I didn’t. I—” She took a shaky breath. “I was going to, but then I saw that her lips were...”

“Blue?”

Holly nodded. She was visibly trembling. “I... I freaked. I ran inside, called 911.”

“Good girl,” murmured Ben before he could stop himself.

“The... the operator, she told me how to do CPR—”

Fraser’s grip on his pen was very slippery.

“And I tried. I... I opened the car door, and it was so cold—”

Fraser forced himself not to shiver.

“I did what the lady said. I pushed on... the chest and breathed into... the mouth, but...”

Fraser’s lips were pressed so tightly together his jaw hurt.

“And then the ambulance came.”

Fraser raised his hand to his eyebrow. “When—?”

“Maybe ten minutes later.”

Thank God, Ben thought desperately, closing his eyes as he started breathing again. He wasn’t sure exactly when he’d stopped.Thank God someone was able to get there so fast, thank God she was only alone with the body for that long and no longer, oh, thank you, God—

“Sergeant Fraser?” said Holly suddenly.

His eyes snapped open.

“Did I— did I do okay?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Ben said and pulled her into a tight hug. “You did so well. You did everything right.”

“But maybe— maybe if I’d... Maybe I could have—”

Fraser pulled away, but he didn’t let go of her shoulders. He looked directly into her eyes. “Holly, did the paramedics or the police tell you anything about how your mother died?”

“Hypothermia,” she replied numbly.

“Did they teach you anything about what that means, how it works?”

She shook her head.

Ben sighed and looked down at the floor, the gap between him and his daughter. He’d always known that one day he would have to reveal to his children the depth of his knowledge about death. Foolishly, he’d hoped that the day would come much later. Very foolishly, he’d hoped that the day would never come at all. He raised his eyes to hers again.

“Holly, your mother died a long time before you found her,” he said in what Ray would probably call his Fraser-est voice: calm, rational, gentle. Professional. “Given the amount of alcohol she had no doubt consumed that night, she was likely very dehydrated, and dehydration allows hypothermia to set in fast. The body simply cannot regulate its temperature very well when it’s dehydrated.”

He paused, and Holly nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Fraser repeated. “Now, given what you’ve told me, it seems likely that she came inside to greet Marge while you were sleeping; otherwise, Marge wouldn’t have left you alone.” Unlike your mother, Ben added silently. “She must have gone back out to the car after Marge left.”

“Why?”

Such a simple, unanswerable question. “It’s anyone’s guess, Holly,” said Fraser. “Maybe she forgot something in the vehicle, maybe she’d decided to go back out again, maybe—”

“Wouldn’t surprise me if she was going back to the bar,” Holly muttered.

Fraser acknowledged the comment by inclining his head. “It’s possible,” he conceded. “What we do know is that she was in the car for six, maybe even eight hours.” He took a breath. “You said she was partially undressed?”

Holly’s face went pink as she nodded.

“That’s very common, actually, in cases of hypothermia. The...” Fraser hesitated. He was about to say _victim_ , but it wasn’t the right word. “The sufferer,” he went on, “becomes delusional. They may feel warm and begin to remove articles of clothing. Unfortunately, as you can well imagine, this only increases the rate of... decline.”

Holly nodded again, her eyes bright.

In his most gentle professional voice, Fraser went on. “If I had to give an educated guess, without seeing the paperwork, I would estimate her time of death at three, maybe even four hours before you found her.”

“How can you know that?”

Fraser just looked at her.

“Oh.”

Ray might have said something like, _It’s my job to know shit like that, kiddo_ , but Fraser could only nod. He looked away for a moment, then brought his eyes back up to that young face that suddenly looked much older. He added, “She felt little pain. It’s likely she fell into a dream, Holly. She went to sleep, only she didn’t wake up.”

“Oh.”

Fraser paused again. “Did the paramedics tell you that?”

Holly shook her head. “So...?”

“So, I assure you,” said Fraser firmly, “there was nothing more you could have done. You were just a little girl, Holly.”

Her eyes spilled over, and Ben drew her back into his arms. “You did everything you could,” he said. “And I am so proud of you.” 


End file.
